


Fate is a Fickle Thing

by Taytair (Dragonshifter)



Series: Eccedentesiast's Redamancy [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Bitterness, Cheating, Child Neglect, F/M, Fate, Fate & Destiny, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Neglect, References to Depression, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates, Taylor-centric, Verbal Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-18
Updated: 2020-07-18
Packaged: 2021-03-05 11:21:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25349917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonshifter/pseuds/Taytair
Summary: Fate is a fickle thing. Taylor doesn't need anymore pain.
Relationships: Taylor Soinre/Valtair Drastien, Taytair
Series: Eccedentesiast's Redamancy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1783633





	Fate is a Fickle Thing

Fate is a fickle thing. It doesn't matter which name you give it or which label you choose to use- fate, destiny, predestination- it all boils down to a fairy tale wish, an excuse to hide behind when things inevitably go wrong. Except, that's not quite true either. Fairy tales, at least, the originals, were gruesome things, filled with pain and horror. Nothing as fantastical as what humanity desperately tries to hold onto. No, in man's eyes, fate is not a fairy tale, it's a romance. In truth, it's a lie. A simple pipe-dream meant to keep the balance. The balance between _what_ exactly is uncertain. Taylor supposed it shifted from person to person. Taylor isn't naïve enough to surrender her freedom and control over her life to a daydream. Happiness isn't something you wait for, it isn't something you get just by letting things happen. Although, Taylor had always believed happiness to be its own sort of lie as well. It didn't really matter though, it was a lie she was desperate to believe in for her own sake. With this thought, she supposed this might be why people believed in fate as well- for their own sake. Perhaps it gave them purpose.

In all honesty, Taylor wasn't entirely sure she knew what happiness felt like. She couldn't ever clearly remember a time ever feeling it- sure she had felt proud, relieved, grateful, and an assortment of other emotions, but never happiness. Not the way others seemed to feel it.

~~~

When she was younger, Taylor could remember her mother sitting her down on her lap and gently tracing the image of lightning that began on her right shoulder and seemed to expand. It wasn't some cartoon image of lightning either, it was ferocious power that almost seemed to glow as it took root within her skin.

The hazy memory always began this way. Her mother, a lap, and gentle fingers across the skin on her arm. Taylor could vaguely remember her mother explaining what it was. What it meant.

A soulmark. Apparently she was lucky, not everyone was privileged to have one. A person meant for her, her "other half." She remembered thinking it was ridiculous. How could someone be her "other half" when she was already whole? Why must she depend on this one person for happiness? Was she obligated to love this person unconditionally just because of some silly image written on her skin? An image that had little to no scientific knowledge to be learned on it? Still, it was a promise. A promise that somewhere there was someone who would love her unconditionally, or as near to that as they could get.

(Perhaps she was happy then).

~~~

And then her mother's plane got struck by lightning and there were no survivors. That was the first time Taylor realized she couldn't let something as contradictory and unreliable as fate control her.

~~~

Her dad stopped loving her. Apparently the reminder of his wife's death stretched across his daughter's body was too painful. Perhaps he never had loved her. Perhaps no one was capable of loving her- after all, if her father couldn't love her, who could?

(A voice in the back of her head whispered that her mother had. That if her mother were here, she would probably wrap her up in her arms and shower her in it. Her mother had always seemed to hold too much love within her. Taylor had always thought she'd end up hurting herself that way- turns out it wasn't her mother she had to worry about being hurt because of too much love. Taylor resolved to never love as deeply again).

~~~

He got married again, her father. Apparently her soulmark was a betrayal to her mother's memory, but not this. No, now _Claudia_ was allowed to invade her home with those plastic smiles and patronizing platitudes. Claudia with her daughter Marcella. Taylor wondered who the father was.

~~~

Apparently Marcella was not a step-sister, but a half-sister. A half-sister who seemed to think she was entitled to Taylor's life. She was an absolute menace. Taylor wondered if her father would love her if she were more like Marcella. But then she remembered her father's betrayal. 

Marcella was only a year younger than her. She was six. Her mother had died a year earlier. Was it a coincidence that her mother died on the anniversary of the proof of her father's unfaithfulness? Did her father forget, when he finally told her the truth of Marcella's birth, that his wife had died only the previous year? 

Did it really matter?

~~~

Her childhood house was no longer a home. It hadn't really been one since her mother had died. It had only gotten farther from being one after Claudia and Marcella had come. Their words no longer affected her (she didn't cry in her bed at night because of _them,_ she just missed her mom, that's all). Who _cares_ what they think of her? Who cares that she is not liked by every person she has ever met? Who cares?

~~~

Fate is a fickle thing. It promises a utopia in a dystopian world. It's an illusion that once broken, hurts far more that anything it may have been trying to protect you from before. Taylor knows this. She reminds herself of this when she meets the boy with lightning in his soul and his heart on his sleeve.

~~~

She doesn't even like him at first. Except, she _had_ felt drawn to him. Like magnetism had discovered that they were on opposite ends of the pole and was insisting they drew closer. 

~~~

She tried to ignore the thundering of her heart when he smiled. She tried to ignore the heat that warmed her face when he so much as complimented her. She tried to ignore the growing curiosity of whether he had a soulmark. Of if it would fit her. Of if he even thought of her in that way. Of if she was even capable of loving again, and in this manner, no less. She tried to ignore the voice in her head that sounded suspiciously like her mother. The voice that talked of a promise of happiness.

Fate is a fickle thing. Taylor doesn't need anymore pain.


End file.
